"Interestingly, I detect a hint that he (BD) no longer regards beating children as desirable, which is certainly an improvement on his earlier rants on the subject. So I guess dumb threads like this might actually have some positive value (beyond Boazy's narcissism) after all." (CJ Morgan)

Yes, I wondered too if this thread might be an indication that a heart does beat beneath the cruel words cranked out from his keyboard. The newly acquired responsibility of helping shape a young life can do that to even the most hardened.

Perhaps BD could start another thread and ask what we think might be the effects of religious indoctrination on a young and developing mind. To me, the way his religious zealotry will mess with this young girl's thinking is far more an issue of debate than the harm that might be done by receiving an occasional smack on the bottom.

If BD's grand-daughter is subjected to the same relentless barage of hate-filled godspeak that we all have to cop here, one can only wonder how she will cope.

Poor old Boazy. You're copping a real bashing. And here I am to join in.

I don't have kids. So I don't know nothing. My gut feeling is that smacking a child is what happens when a parent gets short-tempered and loses control. The attempt to tie it to morality or any justification of the for-their-own-good variety seems to be to be merely a way for a parent to pretend to themselves after the event that they didn't do something they are rather ashamed of.

I don't have kids, but I have been a kid. My mother smacked me once that I remember. I remember it not because I learnt anything, but because I was afraid of her for the first time. It was one of the rare times in my entire nearly-40-years that I can think of her being anything other than angelic and serene. It was possibly the first time I saw rage.

All perfectly understandable — a hardworking mother facing the irritations of toddlehood. I'm not complaining — I had a wonderful childhood, thanks to her. But I don't imagine she would explain the smack as anything other than her momentarily losing her temper.

Because of my lack of experience, I really don't want to be judgmental. I'm sure those who choose to smack have reasons they find compelling. They are, I understand, setting up a disciplinary framework. But I think the idea that smacking is somehow "moral" or contributes to a moral framework is just dumb. If you need to smack to teach your kids morals, then you are not an effective communicator of morals. Surely?

Vanilla, speaking from my own experience not all parents who smack do it in temper. My recollections of being smacked as a child don't include parental anger nor did I ever smack in anger whilst I still believed it was an aceptable form of discipline. I now believe that the evidence about the harm of smacking is sebstantial enough that I don't think it's worth the risk. There are benefits - short duration, no sense of being cut off from family etc, effective even with very severe tantrums where other forms of discipline sometimes can't provide (other than serious restraint).

Others have had different experiences and some parents clearly do hit in anger.

R0bert

Sure R0bert, I'm sure you're right. I guess my point is more that, even if smacking isn't it anger, its intent is disciplinary rather than moral, as Boazy seems t be suggesting.

Robert,

You may have other reasons that you think corporal punishment is risky that you consider too personal to share but in here you cited a study as the reason for changing your mind. How firm are you in considering this study sufficient for you to ignore the experience of 20 million parents over more than 5 thousand years with the occasional exception?

The study itself points out:

1. No causal direction was established.

That is obviously very significant. The study refers to Strauss’ findings in related longitudinal studies (reported in two books) apparently to make the educated guess that there is the possibility of a causal direction but that doesn’t change the fact that no causal direction was established in this study.

It is not just a limitation of the design that can be dismissed lightly. It would be if the author just concluded that more research was needed eg. a longitudinal study on these particular issues. However the author of the paper makes broad comments about linking corporal punishment to various things (when only excessive punishment was correlated) and recommends stopping parents from engaging in any corporal punishment. Unlike the media I don’t relate to studies where the author makes firm recommendations based on mere speculation rather than the actual study results.

2. The results are based on “a lot of corporal punishment’.

Wouldn’t it be fair to say that in normal family life where families hit children in appropriate circumstances that there is not “a lot of corporal punishment’?

Contrary to the media portrayal the relevance of the correlation in normal circumstances is thus questionable. As the author’s conclusions and suggestions would mainly apply to normal situations if accepted I naturally wonder why the author would get together all those subjects and investigate all types of things but not look at normal situations. Without wanting to sound too cynical I'll do no more than note that I’d love to get my hands on the results of any pilot study he did.

CONT

3. Even with the minor differences in percentages the subjects are at the age where bad behaviours peak. This could inflate the differences compared with overall populations.

The author counters this with the argument that many of the subjects would come from a privileged socio economic background. However only a small proportion of the subject population are offenders so they all or mainly theoretically could come from a compromised socio economic background thus meaning the effects are inflated.

In spite of actually measuring socioeconomic background and thus having the opportunity to use data analysis to affirm his argument the author says nothing more. You have to wonder why a comparison was not conducted or if it was but the author for some reason overlooked to mention it. Either way it is less than ideal.

With the above issues in mind (particularly 4) the magnitude of the effect needs to be considered.

On the coercion issue the differences were based on prevalences of between 15.9% down to 1.1% depending on the type of coercion and gender.

The increases correlated with excessive hitting are in that context. For example the ten percent isn’t a ten percent increase from eg. 50% of non excessively hit bringing it up to 55% for excessively hit but is rather based on the types of percentages above. All indications are that if normal discipline does have an effect it would be even less.

Some people take the view that parent-child interactions particularly discipline are difficult to study due being incredibly complex and subtle and reducing things to the simplest common denominators to enable research means the overall tone is lost. In any case I think the author could have done better.

I previously opined that FIRMNESS..PREDICTABILITY..CONSISTENCY..CREATIVITY.. with love or patience and empathy seems like a good list. I'd like to add that people need to be aware of the benefits of encouraging positive behaviours. It can be a very powerful tool. Sadly too often only negative behaviours get attention.